The Loose Association of Wargamers

The other war.

Hate to quibble, but surely the defining point of the French patterns is that they originated at the factory, and had nowt to do with the unit organisation - making it entirely normal to have different patterns within one unit.

Buff Orpington wrote: ↑Wed Oct 31, 2018 9:13 am The other war.

You mean the one they lost twice?

The start of Farsends.....

Test bases for iNdluyengwe and iNdhlondhlo regiments. Each Regiment will consist of four bases and both will be making an appearance at Rorkes Drift in a few weeks. I’m shite at taking photos.

Very nice. Look forward to seeing pics of them dying by the hundreds at the game...

Very nice indeed Jeremy. I represent a Zulu regiment with 3x4 base warbands and a unit of 9 skirmishers. Just sayin' . . . . .

Thanks Chaps. Hmmmm... Gary, I think you’re calling multiple units a regiment. I was referring to a single unit. I wasn’t going to do skirmishers. Just doesn’t feel ‘right’? Who knows. That may change after next weekend!

Given that a typical Zulu regiment had around 1500 men I decided to break them down a bit. My limited understanding of Zulu regimental organisation suggested that the smallest tactical unit was the Iviyo, which was 50-100 men. An ibutho was made up of a number of these and tended to form a 'horns of the buffalo' formation when attacking, with the chest screened by 1 or more Iviyo in extended order - sometimes these warriors were given firearms. So given that I wanted a regiment represented on about a 1:20 scale, 3 close order warbands screened by skirmishers seemed to look about right. For Rorke's Drift I probably won't use the skirmishers because the firearms were mostly sniping from the Oskaberg.

Thanks Gary. Makes sense. I suppose I should start referring to them as Impi. At this stage I can bring 8 bases of Zulus. There’s a small chance of another 4

garyp wrote: ↑Wed Oct 31, 2018 4:48 pm My limited understanding of Zulu regimental organisation suggested that the smallest tactical unit was the Iviyo, which was 50-100 men.

Did they ever break away and form an Iviyo League?

Ah, I believe that's my coat lying in the gutter out there....